30 July 2016

A dealer or trader in a commodity. The Random House Dictionary states the ultimate origin is from the Latin "mango", meaning .... salesman! ["Death of a mango?"]

"Monger" was once used as a verb, but it now is typically only employed as the second element of compound words. My OED says examples of such formations are "unlimited", with examples beginning in the 13th century: hay-mongers, holy-water mongers, insect-mongers (?) etc. The most familiar would likely be cheesemonger, costermonger (fruit/veggies), fishmonger, ironmonger, and whoremonger.

As the last-named example suggests, the OED notes that from the 16th century onward, the term nearly always carries the implication of a petty, disreputable, or comtemptible trade in the material - as in the modern "rumor-monger" "gossip-monger" and "scandal-monger."

- created by Winning Our Future (a SuperPAC). The video mixes homophobia and a generous dose of xenophobia into their apocalyptic vision. It has excellent production values and nicely defines "fearmongering."

Reposted again from 2012 to add yet another example:

Cartoon by Rob Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via the political cartoon-laden Jobsanger.

The phenomenon is known in meteorology circles as the more sober “wet
microburst.” They are supposed to happen rarely; conditions must be just
right. A thunderstorm runs into a dry patch of air that sucks
some moisture away. The air underneath the storm cloud cools, making it
more dense than the air around it. The cooler air begins to drop into
even warmer air and then accelerates. When the faucet really flips on,
air can blast out of the sky at more than 115 miles per hour. It
deflects off the ground and pushes winds outward, at or near tornado
strength.

This summer I began writing a short series of posts about our local community garden and my plot in it. This past week disaster struck.

South-central Wisconsin normally gets about 4" of rain in the entire month of July. Last weekend, according to the admins, "...we
received slightly over 4
inches of rain on one day,
and then followed by
another 3 inches the
following day... One of the
gardeners who went into
the garden towards sunset
of the first day reported
that water was knee deep
in places." This community garden is located in an area that doesn't drain well, so most of the garden plots had standing water for 4-5 days. The result was brutal for many of the vegetable crops.

The top photo shows someone's row of cabbages. The leaves are dead and surrounded by not-yet-dry mud. Here is someone's tomato patch:

The marsh hay covers the mud, but it's evident that all of the tomato plants are dying. That surprised me a little, given how fleshy the fruits and the stems of tomatoes are, and how avidly they take up water in the summer. But I think the standing water "drowns" the plant by cutting off oxygen to the root system and by facilitating the growth of fungi.

Someone else lost his/her tomatoes and the climbing legumes.

In my plot the tomatoes are dead, and these three rows of carrots are on death's doorstep. The dill still stands, but is yellow. The corn and squash look like survivors.

The least-affected plots in the community garden are (not surprisingly) the straw-bale gardens, like this one:

I can respond to this with some equanimity, since the garden was mostly designed for butterflies, and the tomatoes can be replaced with ones from our home garden (or the local farmers' market).

But as I surveyed the damage, I was forcefully reminded of an incident my mother related to me on several occasions. She grew up in the 1930s on a Norwegian family farm in southern Minnesota, and remembers an incident where severe weather (I think a hailstorm) devastated one of the farm fields. She remembers her mother nearly in tears saying to her "we really needed that crop." Theirs was a life lived much closer to the edge than I will likely ever experience. In an era before farm subsidies and crop insurance a single weather event (early or late freeze, wind lodging of the corn or grain, epidemic illness in the animals) went directly to the bottom line, especially in a cash-poor system where finished goods like clothing were sometimes obtained by barter.

What I lost amounted to several dozens of hours of labor. Only two generations earlier a similar event would have been life-altering. A sobering thought.

[People ageing without children] includes those who aren’t parents (either by choice or
circumstance), as well as those who are estranged or geographically
separated from their adult children; those whose children have care
needs of their own; or whose children predeceased them.

Ageing without Children (AWOC) was
set up in 2014 by Kirsty Woodard and three other campaigners to raise
awareness and provide support to this significant, yet hidden, group in
our society...

Indeed, the government line on ageing is that ‘families must do more’ - ignoring those for whom that isn’t an option...

Reactions to the issues of ageing without children
can be surprisingly cruel and unsupportive, often along the lines of:
‘Well, you should have had kids then,’ without knowing anything of the
individual’s experience...

Norway has hatched ambitious plans to install the world’s first floating underwater tunnels to help travelers easily cross the nation’s many fjords. At present, the only way to travel across the bodies of water involves taking a series of ferries – an inconvenient and time-consuming process. The “submerged floating bridges” would consist of large tubes suspended under 100 feet of water, and each one will be wide enough for two lanes of traffic...

Norway has so far committed $25 billion in funds to the project, which is expected to reach completion by 2035.

How can they spend $25,000,000,000 on this? Because they're not spending $25,000,000,000 projecting their military strength around the world. They understand the importance of maintaining and improving infrastructure, and their nation's political structure is not controlled by the military-industrial complex.

This video brings back fond memories. When I was a youngster, my family spent a lot of time at Leech Lake in northern Minnesota. From the time I was about 12 years old, I was allowed to take the boat out by myself (a heavy wooden 14-foot boat with a 7.5 hp Evinrude, laughable by today's standards of speed, but great for trolling and drifting). I knew the locations of the logs on the lake bottom, and often tried to retrieve lures with home-made grappling hooks.

After nearly a year of exploration, Chinese researchers have determined
that the [deep blue “Dragon Hole” in the Paracel Islands, called the “eye” of the South China Sea] sinkhole is likely the world’s deepest, reaching about 987 feet below the surface and surpassing the previous record
holder, Dean’s Blue Hole near the Bahamas, by more than 300 feet...

Researchers told the television station that after about 330 feet, the water is oxygen free and likely unable to support life.

I find the latter observation to be the most interesting aspect of this report. I know of no reason why deoxygenated seawater would be heavier, so I presume the anaerobic environment develops because of consumption of oxygen during breakdown of organic matter that falls into the hole, and a lack of circulation of the water within the hole. But I would think there would still be extremophiles down there, and that when they refer to "life" they are referring to oxygen-dependent life.

Addendum: Here is a reply I received from a relative of mine who spent his professional career studying similar environments:

Some of these marine
sink holes contain water that is more dense than normal seawater
due to saltier ocean conditions in the past. If a full scientific
report references a "chemocline" that's what is implied.
There will certainly be microbial life, almost certainly based on
use of sulfate or elemental sulfur in anaerobic respiration of
organic matter that ends up in the hole. These are quite
"garden variety" bacteria - well known from marine
sediments a few meters below the sediment-water interface. They
are not really even "extremophiles", just well known
anaerobes. Fermentative bacteria would also be part of the
microbial food chain.

24 July 2016

The 31-year-old Wyeth modeled the painting's frail-looking brunette after his neighbor in South Cushing, Maine. Anna Christina Olson
suffered from a degenerative muscular disorder [Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease] that prevented her from
walking. Rather than using a wheelchair, Olson crawled around her home
and the surrounding grounds... The sight of Olson picking blueberries while crawling through her fields
“like a crab on a New England shore” inspired Wyeth to paint Christina’s World.

Art historians have often snubbed Wyeth's works in their surveys, and some naysayers have attacked the painting's widespread popularity, deriding it as "a mandatory dorm room poster." Meanwhile, critics have chastised Wyeth's attention on Olson's infirmity and characterized it as exploitation. Still others claim there was no art in rendering realistic imagery in paint...

Christina's World remained her favorite to the end. Once when I
asked her why, she simply smiled and said, 'You know pink is my
favorite color.' 'But you're wearing a flowered pink dress in Miss Olson
and holding a kitten. I thought you loved kittens.' 'Course I do, but
in the other one Andy put me where he knew I wanted to be. Now that I
can't be there anymore, all I do is think of that picture and I'm
there.'

Wikipedia has an extensive list, from which I've extracted some of the names I recognize:

Alan Alda born 1936 An actor most famous for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the television series M*A*S*H. Alda contracted polio at age seven, during an epidemic. His parents administered a painful treatment, developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, in which hot woolen blankets were applied to the limbs and the muscles were stretched by massage

Mia Farrow born 1945 An actress who was appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 2000, and campaigns in the fight against polio. Farrow collapsed on her ninth birthday and was diagnosed with polio two days later. She was in the hospital for eight months, where an iron lung maintained her breathing.

Gwen Verdon 1925–2000 An actress and dancer on Broadway and in films. Verdon was encouraged to dance by her mother, a dance teacher, as therapy for her polio-afflicted legs.

Johnny Weissmuller 1904–1984 At age nine, Weissmüller contracted polio. At the suggestion of his doctor, he took up swimming to help battle the disease, and he went on to win five Olympic gold medals in the sport during the 1920s.

Arthur C. Clarke 1917–2008 A science-fiction author and inventor. He contracted polio in February 1962, which confined him to bed for months. In 1984, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and he spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

Judy Collins born 1939 As a child, singer-songwriter Judy Collins spent several months in the hospital recovering from bout with polio. Collins later became a representative for UNICEF and has worked to promote polio vaccination programmes.

Donovan born 1946 Folk singer-songwriter and guitarist Donovan contracted polio, aged four, from the vaccine he was given. This left him with a limp and feeling excluded. However, he says "I kind of look back on it and think it was positive for me because it made me withdraw from my pals and realise I was different."

Michael Flanders 1922–1975 An actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs, often in partnership with Donald Swann. He contracted polio in 1943 while serving in the Royal Navy, and required a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Joni Mitchell born 1943 A musician, songwriter and painter. Mitchell started singing at age nine while in the hospital recovering from polio. Her distinctive sound featured dozens of non-standard guitar tunings, which she developed partly to compensate for a weakened arm.

Itzhak Perlman born 1945 A virtuoso violinist. He contracted polio at the age of four. Perlman requires braces and crutches to walk, and plays the violin seated.

Dinah Shore 1916–1994 A big band singer, actress and talk show host. Shore contracted polio, aged 18 months, which left her right leg crippled. She recovered strength through massage, swimming and tennis.

Neil Young born 1945 A singer-songwriter and guitarist. He caught polio at age five, during the epidemic of 1951.

Mitch McConnell born 1942 A Republican member of the United States Senate from Kentucky and current Senate Minority Leader. He contracted polio at age two resulting in a paralyzed left leg, but eventually recovered with physical therapy.

Robert McNamara 1916–2009 A business executive and former United States Secretary of Defense. Both McNamara and his wife contracted polio in August 1945. He was in the hospital for a couple of months but his wife was badly affected and remained there for nine months. His career change from Harvard professor to the Ford Motor Company was made to pay her hospital bills.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945 U.S. President 1933-1945. FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now called the March of Dimes. He spent as much time as he could recuperating from Poliomyelitis in the waters of Warm Springs, Georgia where he founded one of the first rehabilitation facilities for Polio survivors.

Bud Grant born 1927 The long-time former American football head coach of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League for eighteen seasons. He caught polio as a child, leaving one leg shortened. He was advised to take up sport as therapy.

Jack Nicklaus born 1940 A professional golfer who has won many major golf championships. He caught polio, aged 13. Nicklaus was affected with stiffness, pain and weight loss over two weeks. He recovered without any paralysis but believes he may have post-polio syndrome, which makes his joints sore.

Wilma Rudolph 1940–1994 A track and field athlete, Rudolph was the first American woman to win three gold medals at the Olympic Games. At age four, she contracted polio and lost the use of her left leg. After five years of massage and exercises, she managed to walk again without her leg braces. By the time she was a teenager, Rudolph was faster than the boys in her neighbourhood were. Rudolph won a bronze medal, aged 16, at the 1956 Summer Olympics and three gold medals in the 1960 Summer Olympics.

Frida Kahlo 1907–1954 A painter who was the subject of a 2002 movie starring Salma Hayek. She caught polio, aged six, and spent several months in bed. Kahlo was left with a deformed and shortened right leg.

Dorothea Lange 1895–1965 A photographer and photojournalist most noted for her picture Migrant Mother. She caught polio, aged seven, and was left with a withered right lower leg and a limp. Lang said, "It was perhaps the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me. All those things at once. I've never gotten over it and am aware of the force and power of it."

Henriette Wyeth 1907–1997 A portrait artist. She caught polio as a child, which crippled her right hand. She compensated by holding the paint brush between her first and second fingers.

The exhibition also reveals new evidence discovered by the writer
Bernadette Murphy, as revealed in her book Van Gogh’s Ear: The True
Story (Chatto & Windus). Murphy found a note and diagram from Dr
Félix Rey, who had treated Van Gogh in Arles after he had mutilated his
ear. This note was written on 18 August 1930 for the American novelist
Irving Stone, author of Lust for Life (the document has been lent to the
Amsterdam museum by the Bancroft Library at the University of
California).

Rey’s diagram shows that virtually the entire ear was cut off, with a caption stating it showed “what remained of the lobe”...

Most importantly, Murphy says she has identified the young woman at the
brothel to whom Van Gogh presented his ear...

The Institut Pasteur medical records reveal that 18-year-old Gabrielle
Berlatier lived at the Mas de Faravelle in Moulès, a village ten
kilometres east of Arles, in Provence. On 8 January 1888 she had been
bitten on her left arm by a dog owned by the farm’s shepherd, Monsieur
Moreau. The dog was shot and found to have had rabies. As Murphy’s book
records, Gabrielle then suffered the painful process of having the wound
cauterised with a red-hot iron, leaving a disfiguring scar. She was
quickly taken to Paris, where she was treated with a new anti-rabies
vaccine, saving her life...

Murphy writes in her book that Gabrielle was too young to be a
registered prostitute, and she was only working as a maid in the brothel [and at the Café de la Gare].

Cow blowing, Kuhblasen, phooka, or doom dev, is a process used in many countries according to ethnographers, in which forceful blowing of air into a cow's vagina (or sometimes anus) is applied to induce her to produce more milk.

Cow blowing was the reason why Gandhi abjured cow milk, saying that "since I had come to know that the cow and the buffalo were subjected to the process of phooka, I had conceived a strong disgust for milk."

A brief search yielded a video of the process. Frankly, I don't find the maneuver any more disgusting than American presidential politics, but in recognition of the more refined sensibilities of some of this blog's readers, I'll place the video below the fold:

An article written several months ago in Salon describes Hillary Clinton as being ideologically closer to Nixon than Donald Trump is:

Part of the problem is definitional and historical, and maybe even
epistemological. What do we mean by “Republican”? A Republican where,
and when? In broad strokes of politics and policy, Clinton is a lot
closer to the worldview of Richard Nixon — the president who funded
Planned Parenthood and proposed a national single-payer healthcare plan —
than Donald Trump is...

She’s a Democrat — a Democrat of a specific vintage and a particular
type. At least in her 2016 incarnation, Clinton is an old-school Cold
War liberal out of the Scoop Jackson Way-Back Machine, a believer in
global American hegemony and engineered American prosperity...

She faces a public ground down and demoralized by 15 years of pointless
warfare and empty paranoia. Clinton’s version of liberalism — she has
earned that label, in all fairness — has been rebranded and reconfigured
so many times no one could possibly keep track of its current contents.
Her politics are like Doctor Who’s flying phone booth: Until you open
the door, you have no idea what’s inside... [good one!]

Cold War liberalism never really went away. It changed its form and its
name but continued to drive the internal politics of the Democratic
Party... Cold War liberals of the golden age were internationalist hawks who favored an aggressive global policy of American hegemony...

By the time Hillary Clinton had her famous undergraduate conversion, and
resigned the presidency of Wellesley College’s Young Republicans to go
ring doorbells for Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, she had presumably
turned against the Vietnam War. As an adult politician, however, she has
come full circle, and now belongs to the tradition of mainstream
war-hawk Democrats whom McCarthy attacked — the Cold War liberal cadre
of Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and the aforementioned Sen.
Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, aka “the senator from Boeing.”..

She’s been inside the defensive Democratic Party carapace of Cold War
liberalism for so long, believing it to be the only possible reality,
that she hadn’t noticed until right now how much the political landscape
had shifted. There are voters who want war, no doubt, and voters who
want liberalism. But they aren’t the same people; the connection has
been severed. Cold War liberalism, in 2016, is a political philosophy
with a constituency of one. To use a reference Hillary Clinton will get
immediately, one pill makes you larger and one pill takes you small.
Taking both at once doesn’t do anything at all.

As thousands of Donald Trump supporters streamed out of an evening
rally here this week, they walked past a handful of vendors from Ohio
selling simple white T-shirts featuring Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky
and a vulgar joke. The back of the shirts read: “TRUMP THAT B----!”

One
woman laughed and said to the man with her: “You have to get one!” A
group of four middle-aged women pulled out their wallets and tried to
bargain the vendors down from $20. One of the vendors shouted again and
again: “Trump that b----! Trump that b----!” A guy walking past
responded: “That’s right!”...

In an interview last month, Trump said he was unaware that his fans were using the term.
“They’re
what? They’re calling her what?” Trump said, as the word was repeated
to him a second time. “I have not heard that. I don’t like that. But I
have not heard that. I would not be happy if I heard it.”...

“Everybody has gotten too sensitive with terminology,” said Amanda
Michael, 27, who attended Trump’s Greensboro rally with her husband, who
wore one of the shirts. “Everybody’s just so sensitive now. Trump
supporters just go out and they just say how they feel. . . . I’m not
offended by it. I mean, it just is what it is. It’s just a feel-good
American-type thing. We are not over-analyzing every little thing that
we say or do.”...

The company’s website includes this disclaimer: “All designs are created
just to allow our customers to expres how they feel. FIRST AMENDMENT
RULES!”...

The front of the shirt features images of Clinton and Lewinsky with the wording: “Hillary sucks but not like Monica.”

After writing posts about politics, it seems appropriate to consider the topic of "bottom wipers."

Some bamboo sticks with scraps of grimy cloth wound around them have
been identified as bottom wipers from a latrine pit in a 2,000-year-old Chinese relay station on the Silk Road. They have also preserved the
first solid evidence of disease spread from east to west by travellers.
Samples of ancient faeces scraped off the fabric and brought back to a
laboratory in Cambridge have revealed eggs from four species of
parasites, including Chinese liver fluke. The fluke needs marshy
conditions to complete its life cycle, so could not have come from the
desert area around the ancient Xuanquanzhi relay station.

I'm not sure why the cloth was attached to sticks for use. I know the Romans used (and reused!) sponges on sticks, and similar contraptions are marketed nowadays for the severely obese or physically handicapped.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of American politics. Sick and tired of the way it is conducted, and sick and tired of reading about it.

But it is unquestionably important, and the outcome of the November elections will impact everyone's lives for the next 4+ years. Michael Moore has recently opined publicly his "five reasons why Trump will win," and national polls show the race to be neck-and-neck.

National polls, however, don't decide the presidency, because the convoluted electoral system takes precedence (as Bush-Gore clearly showed). The site I use to monitor trends in the electoral map is at Real Clear Politics (current map embedded above).

That link uses all available polls to indicate which states are "solid" (a subset of "likely" in the table above the map), "likely," "leaning," or a "toss-up." It obviously is not predictive of the future, but it seems to be a reasonable reflection of best-available current data. I don't know how often it is updated (hopefully every time a new poll result is added in the table under the map at the source).

There are undoubtedly other similar resources. Please offer any suggestions in the Comments.

Addendum: An anonymous reader correctly pointed out that I failed to mention Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight website. Here's the most recent electoral map from there:

538: "We'll be updating our forecasts every time new data is available, every day through Nov. 8."

"A conservation group has created 3D printed sea turtle eggs containing GPS trackers. The eggs are set to be deployed this fall in Central America during an arribada, or mass nesting event when 90 percent of eggs will be poached from certain beaches...

The group plans to create a tracking map on the movement of eggs to help law enforcement officials and activists to crack down on the big players involved in poaching...

Sea turtle eggs are considered a delicacy and aphrodisiac in various cultures. Millions of sea turtle eggs are stolen each year with each one costing anywhere from $5 to $20 apiece causing severe threat to the endangered species. "

Hopefully just publicizing this maneuver will deter some of the poachers. I hope law enforcement will focus on the enablers behind the poaching rather than just punishing the cowboys who take the eggs.

And it's amazing how every exotic or threatened species is considered an "aphrodisiac" by someone.

"When Deborah Zvosec fished around in her mouth during dinner and pulled
out a small grill brush bristle one recent evening, there was a
terrifying moment around the table as her two guests looked down and
found their own metal fibers sticking to the chicken and potatoes...

Zvosec went to Hennepin
County Medical Center the day after the May 27 dinner because she felt
discomfort. Imaging scans found a 1.7 centimeter wire segment embedded
deep in her tongue near the back of her throat. The south Minneapolis woman spent five hours under general anesthesia...

The hazard of a wire grill brush was news to Zvosec and her husband, Dr. Stephen Smith. But one of
the first alerts came in 2012, when the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention reported a cluster of six patients who received
treatment at a Rhode Island hospital system.

Injuries
ranged from a “puncture of the soft tissues of the neck, causing severe
pain on swallowing, to perforation of the gastrointestinal tract
requiring [emergency] surgery,” according to the CDC. The report
triggered talk of federal legislation and safety guidelines or recalls
by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, but nothing
materialized.

A recent Reason-Rupe survey found that a majority of Americans under 30 have a more favorable view of socialism than of capitalism. Gallup finds that almost 70 percent of young Americans are ready to vote for a “socialist” president...

Indeed, the criticism most heard against the millennial generation’s evolving attachment to socialism is that they don’t understand what the term really means, indulging instead in warm fuzzy talk about cooperation and happiness. But this is precisely the larger meaning of socialism, which the millennial generation—as evidenced in the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements—totally comprehends...

While banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, the government was not interested in offering serious help to homeowners carrying underwater mortgages (the actual commitment of the U.S. government was $16 trillion to corporations and banks worldwide, as revealed in a 2011 audit prompted by Sanders and others). Facing crushing amounts of debt, millennials have been forced to cohabit with their parents and to downshift ambitions. They have had to relearn the habits of communal living, making do with less, and they are bartering necessary skills because of the permanent casualization of jobs. They are questioning the value of a capitalist education that prepares them for an ideology that is vanishing and an economy that doesn’t exist...

...the Keynesian insight that a certain level of equality must be maintained to preserve capitalism has been abandoned in favor of a neoliberal regime that has privatized, deregulated, and “liberalized” to the point where extreme inequality, a new form of serfdom, has come into being...

But millennials are done with blind faith in the market as the solution to all human problems. They question whether “economic growth” should even be the ultimate pursuit. Ironically, again, it is the extreme form capitalism has taken under neoliberalism that has put millennials under such pressure that they have started asking these questions seriously: Why not work fewer hours? Why not disengage from consumer capitalism? Why trust in capitalist goods to buy happiness?

Jose Moreno had serious concerns when he arrived for work... He
and his wife just had a baby and now his job appeared in jeopardy after
an early morning fire destroyed the Johnsonville Sausage factory here
where Moreno had worked for the past eight years.

Moreno, 37, is
still working and being paid by the bratwurst giant. Only on Friday,
instead of using a knife to process hogs, he wore green chest waders and
slogged through the muck of Heiden Pond to search for debris in the
cloudy water.

“I thought I was going to be unemployed,” Moreno, who lives in
Lake Mills, said during a break. “You have a family and you have to
support them.”

Other community projects have included landscaping and brush removal
at the Octagon House and at the municipal airport, sorting items at
Bethesda Thrift Store and painting projects at City Hall.

The
workers are also taking classes at the Watertown campus of Madison Area
Technical College where they are learning computers and math skills and
improving their English. A few, including Moreno, are working toward a
high school equivalency certificate...

After the fire, which was ruled accidental, the company purchased a
68,000-square-foot facility in an industrial park on the city’s south
side. The factory, which will include sausage production lines, is
scheduled to be completed [a year after the fire]...

[H]is work site was the pond where he and his employees, many
of them with more than 20 years with the company, worked to make a
community a little better. On Friday, Moreno and 15 other Johnsonville employees, pulled sunken
logs, beer cans, a lawn chair, a broken milk crate and part of a steel
barrel from the pond. They used chain saws and long-handled clippers to
cut brush and a donated lawn tractor to haul the limbs and debris to a
staging area for pickup by the city, which owns the pond...

This is a very smart business move by the company. Had they not paid their workers to stay and do community work, many of them might have been forced by financial considerations to move away to look for jobs elsewhere. More details and a video at the link.

An excerpt from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawand:

Technological society has forgotten what scholars call the “dying role”
and its importance to people as life approaches its end. People want to
share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle relationships,
establish their legacies, make peace with God, and ensure that those who
are left behind will be okay. They want to end their stories on their
own terms. This role is, observers argue, among life’s most important,
for both the dying and those left behind. And if it is, the way we deny
people this role, out of obtuseness and neglect, is cause for
everlasting shame. Over and over, we in medicine inflict deep gouges at
the end of people’s lives and then stand oblivious to the harm done.

There is something mesmerizing about watching machinery in a video. But for the workers involved, it is an entirely different experience. I have personal experience in that regard, having spent much of a summer earning minimum wage greasing cooker machines and pulling dented cans from an assembly line in a Green Giant corn- and pea-packing plant.

18 July 2016

A remarkable disc golf shot - holing out from 850 feet around a dogleg, for four under par (in this case a 2 on a par-6). The video begins with a drone flyover of the hole, followed by rear and forward footage of the shot.

"87% of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food." "In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass
looting have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been
stripped bare or destroyed." Discussion thread here.

A firefighter from the 9/11 disaster finally received a funeral this year. "The Catholic funeral Mass requires the presence of remains of the
deceased. This requirement was satisfied, unknowingly, by the chief
because he had added his name to the bone marrow registry as a possible
donor in 2000, and, in doing so, gave a blood sample for type matching.
Approached by the family last year, the New York Blood Center located
the vial containing the sample in a facility in Minnesota."

How much does a "road-flagger" earn? "...flaggers in Waukesha County making prevailing wage would earn "$96,646 a
year if they worked full time for the full year" -- a figure that
includes salary plus benefits." (but they typically do not work year round).

"It has become increasingly clear that the U.S. Constitution is in dire need of amendment. The purpose of having a government in the first place
is to give the country a means to deal with pressing national problems,
yet the seemingly permanent deadlock that has gripped our institutions
for the past two decades makes it impossible to carry out this essential
function. It is time for a change in how we govern ourselves, or rather
in how we are currently failing to govern ourselves." (one person's op-ed piece).

"...the House committee probe into 2012’s Benghazi attack was especially lengthy.
At two years and four months, it was longer than Congressional probes
into 9/11, Watergate, the JFK assassination and Pearl Harbor. "How to fix a dented car bumper with hot water.The body of a student campus drug informant was found with a bullet in his head and rocks in his backpack. "It should be illegal to
force small time "criminals" into dangerous situations like that. That's
a job for experienced undercover police officers... I have long found it most curious that cops view coercion as wrong and illegal... unless THEY do it."

gif of the incredible astronavigation of the Juno mission - which required getting a slingshot boost from a return to earth flyby.

"... more or less every politician, sports team, mediocre TV show and
annoying celebrity has been compared to a receptacle full of burning
waste...

The dumpster broke onto the scene in
1936, part of a brand-new patented trash-collection system that
introduced the basic concept of the modern garbage truck, with
containers that could be mechanically lifted and emptied into the
vehicle from above. The system, invented by future mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, George Dempster, took its creator’s name, and the Dempster-Dumpster was born...

In British English, for example, one is
more likely to hear the term “skip” to denote a large garbage
receptacle, but does “skip fire” grab one as an equally startling and
appealing barb to deploy on Twitter? What about “Donald Trump’s
presidential campaign has been a complete wheelie bin fire”? Not so
much. ..

A Google search pulls up references to
dumpster fires in local newspapers and fire department training
documents as far back as the 1970s, but pinning down the derogatory use
of the term is tricky. Even after one tries to filter out official
reports of actual dumpster fires, it seems like the term just suddenly
appeared everywhere in the last eight years, and before that was
nowhere. Isolating a patient zero is a maddening task...

The most likely subcultural culprit,
though, is the sports world. Linguist Mark Liberman, who works at the
University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent blog post,
“A few years ago, I noticed hosts and callers on sports talk radio
using the phrase ‘dumpster fire’ as a metaphor for chaotically bad
situations.” ...

Actually, the death knell for “dumpster fire,” rolling or stationary,
seems to be due. Such over-saturation of a particular, visceral image or
phrase typically leads it down the road to obsolescence, like the “epic
fail” and “fml” of yesteryear.

A suggestion first made by Roger Fisher in the March 1981 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the
President. This young man has a black attaché case which contains the
codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President
at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He
might conclude: “On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative,
Communicate the Alpha line XYZ.” Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.

My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If
ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he
could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one
human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of
millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death
is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.

When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President’s judgment. He might never push the button.“

For a view of the gardens in spring, see my previous post in May. Here's how some of the plots look now. There are as many ways to garden as there are gardeners:

My own plot has met with what might charitably be called "mixed success." On the back row the "Flint corn" ("Indian corn") has tasseled. Underneath the corn I interplanted squash in the style of Native Americans. It is growing vigorously, so I'm going to have to do something to keep it out of my neighbor's plot.

On the next row in, the dill is up nicely, but the other half of the row was fennel, and it never germinated; I've just replanted some, rather late in the season. The carrots in the next row are doing well, but in the row proximal to that the parsley is having trouble competing with native weeds. The tomatoes (outside the image) have been cropped on top by passing deer who probably laughed at the feeble fence (and they nipped some of the carrot tops for dessert).

No sign yet of Black Swallowtail eggs or caterpillars on the dill, carrots, or parsley.

Before-and-after images of an astronaut’s eyes
via spectral domain optical coherence tomography show choroidal folds
(marked by arrows), which are similar to stretch marks. (Courtesy North
American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society)

During Phillips’s post-flight physical, NASA found that his vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/100 in six months.

Rigorous testing followed. Phillips got MRIs, retinal scans,
neurological tests and a spinal tap. The tests showed that not only had
his vision changed, but his eyes had changed as well.

The backs
of his eyes had gotten flatter, pushing his retinas forward. He had
choroidal folds, which are like stretch marks. His optic nerves were
inflamed.

Phillips’s case became the first widely recognized one
of a mysterious syndrome that affects 80 percent of astronauts on long-
­duration missions in space. The syndrome could interfere with plans for
future crewed space missions, including any trips to Mars.

Visual impairment intracranial pressure syndrome (VIIP) is named for the
leading theory to explain it. On Earth, gravity pulls bodily fluids
down toward the feet. That doesn’t happen in space, and it is thought
that extra fluid in the skull increases pressure on the brain and the
back of the eye.VIIP has now been recognized as a widespread problem,
and there has been a struggle to understand its cause — and even to
study it.

Excerpts from an interview with Michael Hudson, a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City :

"...the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to
the Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who
are directly affected by her decisions [as Secretary of State]. Now, my guess is what she
didn’t want people to find out, whether on Freedom of Information Act or
others, are the lobbying she’s doing for her own foundation, which in a
way means her wealth, her husband’s wealth, Bill Clinton’s wealth, and
the power that both of them have by getting a quarter billion dollars of
grants into the foundation during her secretary of state... We don’t have any evidence one way or the other. So certainly there is
no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be an
inherent conflict of interest with the foundation...

The advantage of being under charitable law is it’s in a foundation
that–you can look at it in effect as your savings account. And you can
treat it–you can do with a foundation whatever you want... This isn’t
money that comes into them that goes into an offshore account in
Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. It’s hidden in plain sight. It’s all
the foundation. It’s tax-exempt. It’s legitimate...

... there’s no direct link between the foundation that says it’s existing to
promote various social purposes, and Hillary’s actions as secretary of
state. But there’s such overlap there. I can’t think of any public
official at cabinet level or above, in memory who’s ever had an
overlapping between a foundation that they had and had control,
personally, and their public job. So there’s never been so great a
blurring of categories..."

The rest of the interview is at the not-politically-neutral website Counterpunch.

"From Trevor Nunn's 1993 operatic revival [actually a 1986 production that was videotaped for TV in 1993] of The Gershwins' Porgy &
Bess. In this heart-warming scene, Porgy (Willard White) declares his
feelings for Bess (Cynthia Haymon) who finally realizes, embraces, and
declares her feelings for him. Back Story: After everyone in the hamlet
of Catfish Row understandably turned their backs on Bess (the then wild
and loose girlfriend of the murderer Crown), Porgy - the village cripple
- takes her in. What follows is a Bess' transformation into a lady.
However, she still doesn't have feelings for Porgy until this magical
exchange."

The Wikipedia entry notes that this musical has long been attended with controversy:

From the outset, the opera's depiction of African Americans attracted controversy. Problems with the racial aspects of the opera continue to this day. Virgil Thomson,
a white American composer, stated that "Folklore subjects recounted by
an outsider are only valid as long as the folk in question is unable to
speak for itself, which is certainly not true of the American Negro in
1935." Duke Ellington stated "the times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms."
(Ellington's response to the 1952 Breen revival was, however, almost
completely the opposite. His telegram to the producer read: "Your Porgy and Bess the superbest, singing the gonest, acting the craziest, Gershwin the greatest.") Several of the members of the original cast later stated that they, too, had concerns that their characters might play into a stereotype that African Americans lived in poverty, took drugs and solved their problems with their fists.

A planned production by the Negro Repertory Company of Seattle in the late 1930s, part of the Federal Theatre Project, was cancelled because actors were displeased with what they viewed as a racist portrayal of aspects of African American life. The director initially envisioned that they would perform the play in a "Negro dialect." These Pacific Northwest
African American actors, who did not speak in such dialect, would be
coached in it. Florence James attempted a compromise of dropping the use
of dialect but the production was canceled.

Another production of Porgy and Bess, this time at the University of Minnesota
in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of
the few black students then at the university, members of the local
African-American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and
as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. The play was cancelled
due to pressure from the African-American community, which saw their
success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in Minneapolis–St. Paul.

Posted not for the content, but for the harmony of this particular duet, which I've always enjoyed.

The publication of the contract with the hairdresser, named as
Olivier B, has sparked a row over extravagant spending by a Socialist
president who once liked to see himself as “Mr Normal”.

“I can understand the questions, I can understand that there are
judgments,” said the government spokesman and Hollande ally Stephane Le
Foll as he confirmed the hairdresser’s salary of €9,895 (£8,265) a
month.

“Everyone has their hair done, don’t they?” said Le Foll, known for
his own bouffant style. “This hairdresser had to abandon his salon and
he’s on tap 24 hours a day.”..

The Canard Enchaîné reported that in addition to his salary, Hollande’s
hairdresser was entitled to a housing allowance and other family benefits... employed since Hollande took office and accompanying him on most of his foreign trips...

More at The Guardian. It never ceases to amaze me how far removed "public servants" are from the realities of normal citizens. In every country.

Photo cropped for size from the original at Time. Credit Florian Gaertner—Photothek/Getty Images.

08 July 2016

A jump scare is a technique often used in horror films and video games, intended to scare the audience by surprising them with an abrupt change in image or event, usually co-occurring with a loud, frightening sound. The jump scare has been described as "one of the most basic building blocks of horror movies". Jump scares can surprise the viewer by appearing at a point in the film where the soundtrack is quiet and the viewer is not expecting anything alarming to happen, or can be the sudden payoff to a long period of suspense.
Some critics have described jump scares as a lazy way to frighten viewers, and believe that the horror genre has undergone a decline in recent years following an over-reliance on the trope. These are being referred as "Cheap Jump scares."

"SpotMini is a new smaller version of the Spot robot, weighing 55 lbs
dripping wet (65 lbs if you include its arm.) SpotMini is all-electric
(no hydraulics) and runs for about 90 minutes on a charge, depending on
what it is doing. SpotMini is one of the quietest robots we have ever
built. It has a variety of sensors, including depth cameras, a solid
state gyro (IMU) and proprioception sensors in the limbs. These sensors
help with navigation and mobile manipulation. SpotMini performs some
tasks autonomously, but often uses a human for high-level guidance. For
more information about SpotMini visit our website at
www.BostonDynamics.com"

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, or distant relatives are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net